Marie Madeleine Barg

Marie Madeleine Jeannette Barg (nee Schiller)

January 8, 1948 to September 28, 2021

Sadly, our beloved Madeleine passed away on September 28th, peacefully and surrounded by her family in Gimli Community Health Centre. She was predeceased by her parents Emile and Germaine Schiller and her parents-in-law Abram and Margaret Barg. She is survived by her husband of 46 years Walter; her children Matthew (Cassie), Lindsay (Gregg), and Graham; her grandchildren River, Soren, Marie, and Hazel; and her seven siblings Denise, Rita, Jean, Annette (August), Claire, Peter (Barb), and Ray (Wenda).

Madeleine was born in North Battleford and raised on a farm near Delmas, Saskatchewan. After completing high school, she moved to Saskatoon for a few years before moving on to Winnipeg in 1972 where she met and wed Walter. Madeleine and Walter shared a unique and admirable bond, demonstrating what it truly means to be life partners and teammates. Madeleine was a lifelong artist, and although she was unable to indulge her passion in her early years, she made up for it in later years after her marriage and a move to Gimli, an art-loving hotbed in Manitoba’s Interlake. She won numerous awards in oil painting, watercolours, pastels, and coloured pencils at many local art shows, as well as the Red River Exhibition and Manitoba Society of Artists. There was nothing she liked better than an afternoon spent painting in the countryside around Gimli with her good friends Kathy and Eleanor.

In 1989 her life was permanently altered by a brain tumour, which initiated health issues that would last for the rest of her life. Despite this, and with her husband often away from home teaching in Northern Manitoba, she was able to raise three wonderful children and continue to pursue her artistic ambitions, mainly in Gimli where the family finally settled and established itself. She even ventured to the North with her husband, enjoying a number of winters in the First Nation community of Shamattawa.

Her final, and possibly most devastating, health issue was a stroke in 2014 which pretty well dictated an end to her artistic career, really just as it could have been about to blossom, and which resulted in a gradual but inevitable decline in her health. Nonetheless, she was a fighter with an incredible will to live, surviving far beyond what she might have, and was often called a “miracle lady” by her health care providers. We, her family, consider ourselves privileged to have had her with us for 32 years after the brain tumour in 1989. As the poem says, “We’re not sad that she’s gone, we’re glad that she was here.”

The family wishes to thank the staff at Gimli Community Health Centre and Gimli homecare services for the care they provided for Madeleine, and especially Dr. Adegbesan and Madeleine’s nurses for the exceptional professionalism and compassion they showed toward Madeleine.

In lieu of flowers, please make a donation to your favourite charity or the Gimli Community Health Centre.

Our family invites you to a memorial for Madeleine, who passed away September 28th last year. The location is 50-1st Ave. in Gimli, on Friday, September 9th starting at 2:00 p.m., with a reception to follow at the nearby Lakeview Resort Hotel.

All Madeleine's friends are invited to join us in this celebration of her life.

To send flowers to the family or plant a tree in memory of Marie Madeleine Barg, please visit our floral store.